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Hospital sets policy on leftover documents

The investigation into how thousands of documents were left behind after moving out of the former St. Joseph's Hospital has been completed, the Peterborough Regional Health Centre said Tuesday.

The hospital's privacy officer has worked with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) to investigate what happened and ensure it won't happen again.

In August, the new owners of the Rogers St. site discovered 25,000 medical records containing personal information and about 70 computer hard drives had been left behind.

After further investigation hospital officials found the docum e nt s were not health-care records, but working documents such as blood tests, hearing tests, pharmacy files, X-ray slides and about 800 files from oncology clinical trials in 2003.

Darlene Mack, PRHC's privacy officer, explained that the first step was to ensure all the information was contained and then notify affected patients.

The hospital could either have sent out individual notifications or use broader methods such as advertising and the media. PRHC used the latter approach and provided contact a phone number and email address.

"The reason that things got left there is because there wasn't one final sweep of the building," Mack said Tuesday.

After working with the privacy commissioner's office, Mack has now developed a decommissioning policy that will be used in the event of moving buildings again, or even if someone moves offices, to make sure nothing is left behind.

"The IPC receives our report and considers the circumstances and assurances that we develop these policies," she said. "At this point they're satisfied that we're taking every step to prevent this from happening again."

PRHC received seven inquiries from the public that were fairly general.

"One person wanted to know if the medical records were intact," Mack said. "Medical records were not altered."

With the newly developed decommissioning policy, all staff will now be taking mandatory online education on privacy each year.

"It's fair to say the IPC office have considered the circumstances, details and are assured and satisfied that no further review of the file is required."